


Biological Arithmetic

by Peapods



Category: Casino Royale (2006), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-12
Updated: 2010-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too much is caught up in the man strolling to the elevator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Biological Arithmetic

Her Russian is flawless, her accent unimpeachable. Her smile is just calculated enough, her curves just angular enough. She's never considered herself a very pretty woman, too girlish, too homely, but the tricks of her trade make those facts obsolete. Her skirt is just shy of being too short, her hair expertly coiffed, and she's eyeing the Foreign Minister like the piece of meat he is. She requires more from him than his body, but for now the latter will suit. She can always extract what she needs after the fact.

A woman in the foreign service has little more to offer, according to the higher ups.

*****

The pregnancy is not a total surprise, but her reaction is unexpected. She goes to a doctor unaffiliated with the service and spends two hours wandering around Harley Street wracked with indecision. Pregnancy is not an unknown situation with the kind of work she and her female compatriots are used to, but the handling of those pregnancies...

She is fairly well-in with her supervisor. She could trust him to advise her truly. Choice isn't a clear cut issue in this case.

He rests his chin on his steepled fingers and his gaze is shrewd. "What are your feelings on the subject?"

She's startled by the question and struggles to answer, "To be honest I'm not certain at all. The nature of my work means I won't be a part of the child's life." She is not shy on the subject of abortion. She is aware of the societal implications of both unwanted pregnancy and the advocacy of abortion, but those more political aspects escape her at the moment.

M seems to recognize her indecision. "What about adoption? I could put you on indefinite leave in the mean time. You've certainly earned it." It's a strange sort of mathematical equation which replaces a Politburo member with the fetus her body now carries. She assigns it no supernatural meaning, she is not a silly girl, but she does find some amusement in the arithmetic.

She takes the out he suggests.

*****

She doesn't want to name the infant, a boy, unnaturally quiet. She holds him for a few moments, thinking of what she is giving up. She does not want to be an active agent for her whole career, but she is not ready to let it go. Maybe if he had been born ten years later with a husband rather than a mark she would have had different feelings. As it is, with some regret, she lets the infant go. Off to his adoptive parents.

She is a teacher and he is a financial adviser. They will give him a good life, one she could not provide at the moment.

But that doesn't mean she won't be keeping tabs on them.

*****

They are killed in a car accident when the boy is seven years old. She's not yet in a desk job, but it is only a few years ahead of her and she is on the fast track to a supervisory position. She has proved herself a master of logistics, of delegation, an observer of patterns. It is not the time to be thinking about children, though she and Henry grow closer to their marriage date every week.

The boy is smart, she knows, and resourceful for his age. He reacts to his parents' death with the stiff upper lip so prized by their country. But it is quite clear, and she should have investigated this further, that there is no family to take him in so he will be lost to the foster system. Her lips thin, that would not be acceptable.

In her particular position she is given a large paycheck and not a lot of opportunity to use it. Company money is used on company time and she is rarely _not_ on company time. Henry is also independently quite well-off so her future is assured. She contacts the orphanage and, with a few well thought out threats and promises, designates a trust for the boy. He will attend the best schools even if he does not want to.

*****

His exam scores are impressive, far more so than his peers. He plays some sports, rugby mostly, but spends more time on boxing solo and the martial arts the school provides. His friends, if they can be called that, are always trying to get him to play more as he is a brilliant tactician, ruthless and intuitive. He is going to Cambridge, as should be expected from an Eton student, and has chosen to read history and politics as his subjects, though he excels in mathematics. He seems unsuited for the elbow-patched glory that is academia so the choice is puzzling. He will finish as soon as he can.

Her superiors, all two of them, are beginning to make noises about him. They are not M, not _her_ M, who has long since retired, they do not know who the boy is. She wants to leave it that way. To a point.

*****

She is the one who approaches him, in the end. He looks so much like his father, what she remembers of him, that she can be fairly comfortable around him, unsuspected. He towers over her, defiant and cold. He was possibly more affected by his parents' death than she recalls. But then, it was never his mental state she was interested in.

He is compact, moves with grace borne of years of training on the mat. She can see why her colleagues have been watching him so closely.

"We want you," she states plain and simple. "And given your innate abilities you would be fast-tracked." She can't say yet what he would be fast-tracked towards, not until he agrees, until he signs the contract, but she knows he can guess. He is, sometimes, too smart for his own good.

He has nothing better, she knows. A few offers from private firms, a few interviews in government. Nothing as glamorous as what she offers. It is the glamor that draws them in, the grit that keeps them coming back. Seeing that the glitz only covers up the dirt is a knowledge that agents revel in. They dress up in suits and gowns and wear expensive watches and drink fine wines, but only because they are simultaneously laughing at these refinements. So, interesting that, for her having little influence in his life, he will be drawn in just as she was.

She considers her motives only momentarily. From now on, she is his boss, not his mother. Though something tells her she will continue being his benefactor.

*****

He makes stupid mistakes and then manages to correct them before she or anyone else can give him heat for it. He's almost obsessed with getting the job done, even with some of his more questionable methods, and M worries that it is for her, not for his country.

She has groomed him and supported him and defended him when no one else would and she knows that that is unacceptable behavior. But they knew her plans for him from the beginning, when she bestowed his name on him at the beginning of his service. Name comes from identity, identity does not come from name. Undercover, they construct the person before they give them a name, so it is for the Double-Os. They can pick out the best agents by how they take to their aliases. He takes to James Bond as though he were born to, as the ones before him have done. They cannot fault her her over-interest. They still have not managed to make the connection, to consider comparing the DNA in their possession. M would insist that their genetic connection has very little to do with her interest now.

But, for all that, when he is sitting in her living room, a chastised puppy who has no real apology to offer to anyone but M, she knows it is not the entire truth. She feels disappointment and a strange affection she can't deny.

"Utter one more syllable and I'll have you killed," she says, the empty threat of parenthood.

She did not become a mother again and Henry never questioned her decision. Too much is caught up in the man strolling to the elevator. She issues her demand and when he says "ma'am" his pronunciation and tone make it sound like "mum" more than "boss."

*****

Henry's mother used to call him "her darling boy," and M had had to stop herself so many times from snickering. She stared at her agent, her son, as he walked away in the snow and she tried to brace against the desire to even think of him that way. She bent and picked up the necklace, slid it into her pocket. An experiment ten years ago with normal life, the courage to try and recapture it months before and she doubted he'd ever be the same. Her own darling boy kept getting his heart broken. Part of her was ashamed of thinking about how it made him a better agent. Another part was intent on hopeless revenge for the offenses.

No one should be able to hurt her darling boy, but her.

*****

She signs orders and gives briefings and if Bond ever suspects their connection, it is only hinted at in the insolent smiles he favors only her with and a particular affection in his tone of voice.

They go on as they've gone on since their second meeting. Benefactress and recipient. Boss and employee.

Mother and son.


End file.
